There's a New Persona 5 Game, But It's a Gacha for Smartphones | Push Square

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Persona 5 is easily one of the most iconic JRPGs of modern times, and so it stands to reason there’s more mileage to extract out of Joker and gang. We can’t say we had a gacha adaptation for smartphones on our bingo card, however, but that’s exactly what was announced earlier this week. There’s currently no launch date attached to the project, and as of the time of writing, only a release in China has been confirmed.

Nevertheless, the game – fully named Persona 5: The Phantom X – will appear instantly familiar to fans of the main console game. While it’s introducing a new group of Phantom Thieves, the gameplay trailer is filled with recognisable locations and activities. Development is being led by Perfect World Games and Black Wings Game Studio, but SEGA is lending support – and the protagonist has been designed by Atlus’ Shigenori Soejima.

The premise and gameplay loop is pretty much identical to the main game: you’ll spend the day at school completing lessons, and then you’ll be able to engage in various extracurricular activities afterwards – including playing baseball and visiting other worlds. Obviously the twist here is that there’s inevitably going to be a gacha element, so expect to unlock other characters and potentially even Personas by investing in-game currency into slot machine-style systems.

It’s clearly all massively inspired by the console game, so it’ll be interesting to see how just how much original content ends up being included here. But to be honest, we wouldn’t bet on a Western release anyway – this is unquestionably being aimed at the smartphone obsessed Asian market.

A true PlayStation veteran, Sammy's covered the world of PS gaming for years, with an enormous Trophy count to prove it. He also