Persona 5: The Phantom X evaluation
I take into account myself an unbearable Persona 5 fan, however even I am starting to tire just a little of the Phantom Thieves. If there’s one factor Atlus is aware of find out how to do, it is milk the ever-loving god out of a videogame, which I presume is how we ended up right here: Persona 5: The Phantom X, a gacha sport co-developed alongside Excellent World subsidiary Black Wings Studio.
Have to Know
What’s it? A brand new band of Phantom Thieves in a gacha’d-up JRPG.
Launch date [June 26, 2025]
Count on to pay Free-to-play
Developer Atlus, Sega, Excellent World
Writer Sega
Reviewed on Nvidia GeForce RTX3070, AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT, 32GB RAM
Steam Deck Playable
Hyperlink Official website
It is weird, as a result of The Phantom X appears like Persona 5 (and certain does play like Persona 5) till I dare to delve a pair menus deep and its iconic stylised UI begins to drown in all of the information-dense gacha nonsense I’ve a love-hate relationship with.
But, regardless of my exhaustion with the setting and all-too acquainted system, I gotta admit: The Phantom X is fairly freakin’ good.
Take your time… once more
In spite of everything, it actually is far of the identical. If it ain’t broke, do not repair it, yada yada. Hell, the sport even opens with the identical cutscene as the unique sport, albeit with a pair visible tweaks to transition it properly into its gacha counterpart.
There’re palaces to discover, Mementos to dive into, personas to fuse, bonds to type, social stats to develop, and calling playing cards to ship as… as soon as once more, the Phantom Thieves. Although with a unique forged of excessive schoolers to take up the mantle this time.
Even when The Phantom X does issues in a different way, it is extra a switchout than one thing brand-new. The compulsory animal sidekick is now an owl named Lufel—who additionally hangs round in your faculty bag and accompanies you to each place you go to—whereas Shujin Academy has been sacked in favour of Kokatsu Academy.
This made the opening hours of The Phantom X just a little irritating for me, as somebody who has sunk lots of of hours into the unique JRPG throughout half a dozen playthroughs. It covers numerous outdated floor, and it does not assist that the primary a number of hours of the sport are spent with what’s one of many corniest villains to ever be mistakenly promoted from sidequest fodder to massive unhealthy.
Fortunately, The Phantom X retains issues attention-grabbing sufficient with its new band of rag-tag rebels, even when their tales largely backtracks over Persona 5’s major narrative beats. Protagonist Marvel is an identical clean slate to heroes of Persona previous, however they’re joined by the likes of spunky baseball prodigy Motoha Arai, standoffish foodie Shun Kano, and disciplined class president Riko Tanemura.
Motoha specifically completely carries the early story, connecting her narrative to the primary boss (which prevents it from being a complete flopfest) and giving her loads of establishing plot to make me care about her by the point her persona awakening comes round, one thing not at all times essentially afforded to the primary recruit on this sequence.
One thing particularly attention-grabbing about The Phantom X, nevertheless, are the Phantom Idols: characters that are not canonically Phantom Thieves or persona customers, however are manifested as such by the protagonist.
It is basically The Phantom X’s approach of having the ability to gacha itself up with out having to narratively tie each single banner to the story, and I feel it is the right technique to do it. It actually helps that the sport no less than makes an attempt to be sure you’re clued up on these individuals, or provide the alternative to know them extra.
The Phantom Idols are largely facet characters I used to be already encountering out on the planet, like trade pupil Yaoling Li and even Motoha’s greatest good friend Tomoko Noge. Not solely is it a comparatively straightforward technique to dump new characters into an ever-growing gacha pool, it additionally permits the sport to do one thing I am actually keen on: turning not-teenagers into persona customers.
I’ve already received a large weak spot for Kayo Tomiyama—a 44-year-old housewife whose vocab remains to be chock with painfully outdated lingo, remnants of her former life as a gyaru which we get to see in her Phantom Idol design. It goes the opposite approach, too, like extremely sensible 10-year-old Haruna Nishimori. And so they’re not within the sport proper now, however future updates ought to see new recruits just like the 75-year-old Chizuko Nagao, who I’m unbelievably excited for.
Steal your coronary heart (and your pockets)
Each Phantom Idols and Phantom Thieves are put to make use of in basic Persona fight. Flip-based, weak spot exploitation, and a modified As soon as Extra system that has chosen characters doing an computerized follow-up assault as a substitute of Persona 5’s extra guide talent choice. It will be a well-recognized system to veterans, and it feels simply pretty much as good right here because it does in its extra conventional JRPG format.
Battles might be performed out manually or sped by and auto-played equally to Hoyoverse’s Honkai: Star Rail. I discovered myself preventing so much, so it was a helpful software to get by a number of the extra sluggish fights and energy by my dailies.
That is as a result of fight is tied to most of The Phantom X’s extra gachafied techniques, of which there are a staggering quantity. There are a dozen totally different currencies for all method of development. Need to stage up characters? Spend your stamina on one struggle. Need to improve your weapons? That’ll be extra stamina spent in a unique struggle.
There are additionally more difficult modes for me to flex my built-up characters: Velvet Trials throw all method of robust shadows my approach, with my efficiency normally scored based mostly on how shortly I can finish the struggle and do it with comparatively little harm to my very own squad. A few of them have particular results that run all through every battle too, like gaining stacks of buffs each time I hit a weak spot, or growing particular elemental harm.
To not harp on an excessive amount of about Honkai: Star Rail, however the two really feel very a lot the identical on this regard, so when you’ve got any expertise in Hoyoverse’s turn-based JRPG, it’s best to really feel pretty snug with its battle mode overload. Should you do not, although (or like me you have been out of these trenches for a scorching sec), The Phantom X throws an terrible lot at you in a short time and it is a contact on the overwhelming facet.
The sheer density of it—mixed with the truth that The Phantom X lacks any type of calendar or narratively time-sensitive eventualities—does imply that it takes some time to determine the stream. All the totally different modes, quests, and different choices are tucked away in a myriad of menus and it took me a couple of days simply to determine the place every thing really was and the way I ought to construction every of my play periods.
Days are nonetheless damaged up into components, however I can freely zip between occasions to enhance no matter aim I am making an attempt to attain. If I must spend my motion factors, as an example, I can skip to the afternoon to up my social hyperlinks and work part-time jobs.
Facet quests that require particular occasions or climate circumstances let me freely bounce forward, too, nearly eradicating the necessity to have that requisite within the first place. It is extremely handy, which I in the end choose, however I do miss a number of the extra inflexible scheduling I’ve change into accustomed to.
As soon as I used to be in a position to dig beneath all that gacha BS (I say that endearingly, as somebody who’s eternally imprisoned by no less than one in all these monsters at any given time), it in the end grew to become extra of the Persona I knew and liked.
Would I choose a Persona 6, or something that does not contain some gang of Phantom Thieves? Certain, however The Phantom X has combined it up simply sufficient to stave off that weariness I have been feeling for a bit longer.
Swapping out the OG squad for a brand new forged of robust, well-written characters retains issues feeling recent. They do not really feel underbaked or like they had been purely designed to push monetisation, and positively would not really feel beneath par in the event that they’d been starring in a full-price Persona entry as a substitute.
And as soon as all the Persona 5 nostalgia bait and questionable first villain subsides, The Phantom X begins folding extra of its forged into a much more attention-grabbing story (with better-written villains to root towards). I am nonetheless navigating my approach by it, however I’ve actually been appreciating the way in which it tries to discover themes round apathy and the lack of need, slightly than the ‘rotten adults’ throughline of Persona 5.
Should you’re on the lookout for one thing new, you are actually not going to search out it in The Phantom X. However if you happen to’re cool with gacha video games and are right down to see a unique set of Phantom Thieves, this sport’ll carry you thru no less than a couple of months of enjoyable. Finances-friendliness depends upon you, after all.