Review: Persona 5: The Phantom X Is a Shadow of the Original

Persona 5: The Phantom X is the latest of Atlus’ efforts to turn it into every genre. After a dancing game, a Musou and a tactics RPG, here is the attempt to capitalize on the popularity of gacha games. After the Black Wings Game Studio game’s release in China and South Korea over a year ago, it’s now reaching English and Japanese audiences.

Persona 5 as a gacha is a concept that surprisingly makes sense. Gachas work through regular updates with story chapters that introduce new characters. Persona’s “gain a party member in each dungeon” progression system fits alarmingly well.

Making this work requires a new cast though. Theoretically, it’s unlikely anyone would want to gamble to pull each of the original Phantom Thieves when you could just play Persona 5. Instead of the usual gang, we get a new protagonist codenamed Wonder who is basically Joker with a 90s boy band haircut. He is introduced to the Metaverse by Lufel, an owl whose name I keep forgetting since I call him Owlgana so often. Imagine Morgana, but he can fly and uses big old-timey words. Also his vehicle form is a car, not a bus. Those are the only differences.

In Persona 5: The Phantom X, a mysterious force is using the Palaces in the Metaverse to drain the desires of ordinary people. An incident with a deranged bike courier causes Wonder to fall on his phone and enter the Metaverse. Once there, he unlocks his Persona and begins recruiting members for a new band of Phantom Thieves. Some of them are recruited through the traditional Persona way. Motoha Arai is a Chie/Ryuji hybrid with a personal connection to the first villain. Others are pulled from Contracts, aka a gacha system.

It feels reductive to call this Persona 5 with gacha mechanics, and yet that is exactly it. If you’ve played a gacha game, you know what this means. There are daily goals, training modes and time-limited events. You have a multitude of currencies, upgrade items, and special character tickets, all of which can be earned or paid for. My experience with the genre is entirely HoYoVerse’s work, particularly Zenless Zone Zero, but the systems are practically identical.

But under that, this is Persona 5. The same stylish UI is meticulously recreated. The dungeon navigation is tinged with stealth mechanics and hidden treasures. Combat involves the same turn-based system, with Baton Passes, All-Out Attacks, and navigator bonuses all present. There’s a Velvet Room (this one’s underwater) where you can fuse Personas. All this is wrapped up in a city life sim, during which you have to study, work part-time jobs, and hang out with your friends. Everything you’d expect from Persona 5 is here, just as you remember it.

However, Persona 5: The Phantom X always feels like a lesser version. City life elements are no longer measured on a limited timeline, instead restricted by a daily energy meter. Dungeons strip out resource management tension (save rooms auto-heal you) and instead block progress with arbitrary level caps. Even the plot feels weaker. The original game’s first target is a creepy school coach abusing his power. Here the first target is a man who… likes bumping into women on the subway?

The most egregious downgrade comes in the Persona system itself. Negotiation is out, as Personas leap straight into your compendium upon defeat. You’ll amass a small army as a result, but Wonder can only equip a maximum of three, a quarter of Joker’s maximum. Even building them feels limited, with fewer ability slots and a greater number of passives over battle actions. Personas feel less versatile all round here, which is a shame when the series is literally named for them.

Persona 5: The Phantom X is a difficult game to recommend. As a gacha game, it’s elevated by lifting so much from Persona 5. But the inverse is true, as the gacha elements have weakened a lot of what made the original game great. If you loved the style of Persona 5 and want something free and casual that lets you kick around in its world some more, there’s fun to be found in Persona 5: The Phantom X. But those who min-max the Fusion system or hate gachas are unlikely to be convinced.

Persona 5: The Phantom X is out now for PCs and mobile devices.