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Persona surprises us with a Mobile spin-off | First Impressions - Persona 5: The Phantom X

1K View2023-04-01

Persona 5: The Phantom X is a role-playing game with turn-based combat, slice of life elements, and an anime-inspired art style. A mobile spin-off of the mainline game Persona 5, it takes us back to Japan and reintroduces us to the Phantom Thieves with a brand new protagonist and fresh roster of characters. It is catered more to the mobile platform market — a first in the series, and is now currently in beta (Android) available for China. A PC version is also available for testing, it is a full-on game client and not an emulated Android version.

For those unfamiliar with the series, The gameplay setup of Persona 5: The Phantom X or the Persona game series as a whole centers on the main protagonist and his group of friends being "Persona" users – individuals granted the ability to summon "Persona beings" with special powers.

In line with the theme of the series, the protagonist will need to balance his normal life (slice of life gameplay) along with his supernatural monster killing second life, usually done at night in the realm called the Metaverse. This double life is basically the most alluring part of Persona for me and what makes it stand out from the rest of the JRPGs out there.

The gameplay of P5: The Phantom X is adapted for mobile touch controls and partially simplified, while still featuring the core elements from the series. Again at start, we’re back to high school, roaming around town, interacting with friends and classmates, while being slowly introduced to the Persona powers the protagonist will soon awaken and unlock. When the characters are not roaming around high-school and town at day living their daily lives, they are battling monsters at the Metaverse with a turn-based combat system.

The turn-based combat features a traditional JRPG system, where combatants just take turns attacking each other. What’s special about this is that aside from normal attacks, the characters can summon their Personas that each have powerful abilities. Healing, Magical Debuffs, Buffs, All kinds of elemental and physical attacks, are all possible when using Personas, and they can either use up the character's SP or HP. It’s still as fun and visually appealing as any Persona game, and I’m glad they are not toning down the presentation for this spin-off.

Persona 5: The Phantom X actually looks surprisingly amazing for a mobile title. The smooth cel-shaded art style is back and the soundtrack still feels very Persona-ish with its upbeat music and jazz/rock elements. Many of the UI elements and background music are even copy-pasted from P5 and for good reason. If you actually show this to a Persona fan without revealing the title, they could actually mistake this for an actual Persona 6 gameplay and not a mobile game, that’s how good the game looks visually compared to the original mainline game.

As for mobile centric-elements, the game will be free-to-play at the trade-off of having live service and gacha elements. There will be new animations, skins, and weapons that are all part of the gacha system, as well as the ability to acquire tiered Personas and Characters (including the original Persona 5 characters). Personas can still drop after battles and be fused, but are entirely separated from gacha-obtained Personas.

The game is currently in Chinese localization for now, with Japanese voice overs, but I am hoping for a global beta or even a release soon. So far I like the direction the game is going, it still feels very much like Persona but I can also notice the free-to-play effects kicking in. I do hope it’s well balanced enough to be enjoyable for both free-to-play and premium players once it is released.

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Comments

RPGLover88

A spin-off of a spin-off... How evil is that? 😆 But seriously though, thanks for making a WRITTEN review instead of a freakin' video. I often listen to music when I look at posts on here, so I prefer reading some text rather than watching a video. ✦.✦

2023-05-23

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