For the longest time, I’ve been ready to withstand the pull of gacha. Don’t get me flawed, I’m nicely conscious it appeals to me, Xenoblade Chronicles 2’s Blade system taught me that. Nevertheless, the Genshin Impacts, Fireplace Emblem Heroes, and extra just lately, Umamusumes of the world haven’t been in a position to pull me in. It’ll take greater than some anime boys, ladies, and horses to tempt me into spending an excessive amount of cash on one thing like this – or so I assumed.
Within the lead as much as the worldwide launch, I’d seen Persona 5: The Phantom X content material floating across the web, and I all the time saved one eye on it as a result of the extra I discovered about it, the extra I noticed this is able to lastly be the gacha recreation to get me. Somewhat than taking certainly one of my favorite video games and lowering it to a simplified shell of itself which will as nicely be an auto-battler (taking a look at you, Octopath Traveler: CotC), you may make a powerful argument that P5X is basically simply Persona 5: 2.
Whereas the launch model of the sport solely has two out of at the least seven promised Palaces, the standard of the unique recreation remains to be there. The truth is, I’d even say it’s been enhanced, with the primary Palace specifically having stage design high quality akin to Persona 5’s greatest.
The place feels so expansive as you make your means via it, with loads of alternatives to backtrack and discover non-obligatory content material, which you’re closely inspired to do as you get an terrible lot of free rewards as your completion proportion for every Palace climbs larger – one thing crucial in a gacha recreation. Even when that wasn’t the case, it’d nonetheless be value doing, as there are some enjoyable puzzles with cool mechanics that push the boat out rather a lot additional than P5 ever did, with ideas like resizing or rewinding objects on the earth to make use of them for platforming.
P5 was by no means significantly difficult on this space, and P5X’s enhancements on this subject are minimal. The extra complicated mechanics do require a little bit extra thought, however I’m actually by no means left scratching my head, and actually, typically the sport is actively unhelpful, with Lufel – your Owl equal of Morgana – chiming in and giving recommendation to unravel the puzzle that’s outright flawed, telling you that you might want to come again later or collect extra of a sure useful resource whenever you merely don’t.
The writing has stepped up too, with the pacing specifically being dramatically improved. On this recreation, you’ll enter the Metaverse and get your first style of fight inside about 20 minutes, versus P5’s 60-90, and it gained’t be an excessive amount of longer after the sport provides you free rein to discover the primary Palace. I notice that is seemingly as a result of it must push you to all of the content material the place you may spend cash as shortly as doable, however the story has benefited in consequence.
That mentioned, whereas the plot and Metaverse aspect of the sport have benefited from gacha-fication, the life-sim components which can be so integral to the sequence’ success have taken an enormous hit. The sport’s stamina system limits you to only 5 “Metropolis Life” actions a day, which embody all of the actions that improve your social stats, earn you in-game forex, and enhance your bonds together with your allies. After the beginning rush, issues like bond ranges and social stats climb fairly slowly, so it feels such as you’re barely making any progress or not getting sufficient time to essentially sink into the life-sim aspect of the sport.
It additionally makes the character-focused synergy tales – the a part of P5 that had by far one of the best writing – really feel fairly underwhelming. With the utmost bond stage elevated from 10 to twenty, you don’t get a particular scene for each time you stage up a bond; typically you’ll simply get one of many generic “hanging out” scenes adopted by the level-up display screen. It’s an actual disappointment as spending time with these characters and attending to know them exterior the context of preventing shadows within the Metaverse was what I beloved most about P5, and whereas it’s not gone in P5X, it’s deemphasized in favour of all of the combat-based modes that may push you in the direction of the gacha mechanics.
When you like battling in Persona, there isn’t any scarcity of stuff to do. Apart from the principle story Palaces, Mementos are nonetheless there to discover together with an entire host of various modes. There’s a roguelike mode, a raid-boss mode, two totally different sorts of problem battle modes, and a resource-grinding mode.
Out of those, the one one which limits you with any form of stamina system is the resource-grinding, which creates an enormous dissonance. In P5, a part of the appeal was the truth that each session of prolonged battling was damaged up by a session of life-sim stuff, however in P5X, the closely restricted life-sim turns into barely a blip on the radar in comparison with the unrestricted entry it’s important to fight.
Nevertheless, as annoying as that’s, all of those totally different fight modes are enjoyable and distinct, which pairs nicely with the depth accessible in the case of character constructing. Whereas solely the protagonist, Surprise, can customise their Personas, all the different characters have totally different weapons and equippables that power you to consider carefully about what function you need every character to take, which is compounded additional whenever you add the additional bonuses you get for filling your social gathering with characters of the identical sort.
It implies that I do discover myself utilizing considerably totally different events for every mode, and even take into consideration switching up between particular person battles. Whereas there’ll all the time be some characters that you just simply don’t click on with or discover a use for, I’ve ended up commonly utilizing much more of the roster than I assumed I used to be going to, as soon as I’d gotten fortunate sufficient to unlock all of them, in fact.
Which brings me to the gacha mechanics. In reality, P5X is fairly customary so far as this style goes, even perhaps leaning a little bit extra on the beneficiant aspect when it comes to how a lot free forex it throws at you. Whereas it dries up a bit when you run out of fundamental story content material, being a free-to-play participant is fully viable in P5X, although you’ll have to settle for that there isn’t any means so that you can get all the pieces.
It does have an enormous pacing drawback, although. The staff behind the sport is planning to get the worldwide model to meet up with the Chinese language model, which is a 12 months forward when it comes to content material. This implies content material updates, together with the various limited-time characters, are going to be coming in rather a lot quicker than the sport was initially balanced round. This is the reason the fanbase is at the moment up in arms a few full lack of compensation, as a result of even if you happen to begin the sport now – lower than a month after launch – you’ll already really feel such as you’re behind.
The factor is although, if you happen to’re simply right here for a brand new P5 story and to discover some new Palaces, you may virtually fully ignore it. Pulling a bunch of 5-star characters will definitely make your life simpler, however they’re not required for fulfillment. You gained’t get hard-walled by a boss simply since you don’t have the particular premium character to counter them, and as I mentioned earlier, there’s sufficient depth within the character/social gathering constructing you can work out a means round any impediment – it’ll simply price you time as an alternative of cash.
Persona 5: The Phantom X does an important job of providing you with fundamental story content material of a top quality that’s pretty much as good, if not higher than Persona 5, and makes use of that good will to tempt you over to the extra gacha-ified features of the expertise. To do that, it makes just a few compromises to the Persona formulation that I don’t like, largely in the way it deemphasizes the life-sim components, however I nonetheless suppose it’s a very fulfilling expertise that may maintain you well-fed if you happen to’re gagging for extra Persona content material and are impatiently ready for Atlus to get on with making Persona 6 already.
PC. Persona 5: The Phantom X. Persona 5: The Phantom X. 8. JRPG
