Persona 5 is getting a mobile game, and honestly, I’m surprised it took so long. Persona 5 is one of the most popular and influential RPGs of the past decade, and we know how much greedy little publishers love to mine their darlings for all their worth. Fire Emblem, Tales, Mario Kart, Pikmin, Pokemon, and Final Fantasy are just a few of the big names to make millions on iOS and Android, so it’s hardly a shock to see Persona join the ranks. Given its huge number of crossovers already, a standalone effort seems ideal.
Coming from Chinese company Perfect World Games, Persona 5 X appears to be a pretty faithful recreation of the experience found on consoles and PC. The reveal trailer features similar environments and identical user interface elements spliced together with a selection of new characters and mechanics we’ve never seen before, yet all of them fit snugly within the existing framework - on the surface at least. The mixture of social exploration and battles seems untouched too, but we all know that mobile games like this come with a nefarious catch.
On the surface it looks to kick serious ass. You play as a new protagonist whose parents are travelling abroad, and thus you’re left to fend for yourself in a world where adults are eager to stamp down on and abandon you. Sleep enthusiast Morgana is replaced by an adorable little owl mascot who will perhaps act as our link to the metaverse once we become Thieves tasked with stealing hearts. Aside from the different cast, gameplay seems to involve all the usual activities such as attending classes, hanging out with friends, and fusing Persona.
It is all in Chinese right now, and there’s no confirmation of an international release or exactly how Persona 5 X plans to monetise itself. These are all variables that will make or break a game like this, or at least highlight how greedy it aims to be beyond the gorgeous art and character design. Long-time artist Shigenori Soejima has returned to bring all these new faces to life, so much so that this feels like a sequel to P5 in some ways more than a mobile spin-off. Except it will be confined to our phones and likely truncated in its design to better accommodate quick play sessions and user retention. I can picture ways this might work.
Social links are incremental modes of progress in the base games, and all require several hours of personal and mechanical investment on behalf of the player in order to max them out or fall in love with your high school sweethearts. So long as they aren’t boys, that would be super yucky. A mobile iteration could easily lock new scenes behind an arbitrary window of time or give us an option to cough up fictional currency in order to push forward without the need to wait.
Certain characters could be restricted to season updates or battle passes, rolled out to progress new acts of the story in a manner that better fits portability. I can think of positive ways this could unfold alongside some very negative ones, and right now there is no way to tell which way it will go. Hardcore fans shouldn’t expect a 100+ hour epic though.
Visually it’s just as vibrant and imaginative as anything Persona 5 has thrown at us before, but I know this package will have to exist on mobile platforms in a freemium capacity that nips and tucks at the original experience in ways that are sadly necessary for games like this.Obviously I’d prefer a sprawling adventure on console or a traditional sequel, and it’s still much too early to label Persona 5 X as a cynical cash grab when it exudes the stylish and rebellious spirit of its namesake so well.
The original Phantom Thieves are also set to make a cameo appearance or two according to the official website, suggesting that Atlus might intend to implement an overarching narrative of sorts into this part of the universe.
Persona 5 is massive, so there’s a very solid chance of this receiving a global release and becoming a new obsession for lovers of all things Shin Megami Tensei. In a world where its progenitor is now pushing six years old with no sign of a successor though, I hope X doesn’t rely too heavily on fan service and familiar concepts to reel us in. T
he series is about staying up to date with the modern world and reflecting the plight of young people, so a mobile game that wants to linger within a universe we’ve picked apart countless times already could be a bad idea. Time will tell, since freemium games like this can excel when done right.