Back in April 2021, publisher Perfect World Games announced mobile project Code Name: X and implied in the heaviest way possible that it was connected to the Persona 5 universe. Now, via Gematsu, Perfect World and developer Black Wings Game Studio have fully revealed Persona 5: The Phantom X, a free-to-play RPG for Android and iOS mobile devices that combines familiar mechanics with a brand new story and characters. The Persona 5: The Phantom X announcement trailer and gameplay trailer actually look pretty impressive.
While Perfect World and Black Wings are distributing and operating the game, Sega and Atlus’ P-Studio, the original developer of Persona 5, are supervising the game and providing additional resources. This includes Atlus artist Shigenori Soejima designing the protagonist and the protagonist’s Persona, lending some nice visual continuity. Per Gematsu’s translation, the story of The Phantom X will concern students awakening to their Personas and confronting difficulties together in an era of “low desire.” The rest of it sounds like typical Persona, with daytime activities like baseball and nighttime activities like battling through palaces in another world. If you watch the trailers, it also just looks like typical Persona, in a good and kind of impressive way.
Persona 5: The Phantom X does not have a release date yet, and there does not seem to be any indication of whether it will be localized internationally. Considering how much effort seems to be getting put into it to make it really feel like Persona 5 though, this could be the rare mobile game to garner genuine enthusiasm from the hardcore RPG audience. Check out a few more screenshots below and ask yourself if this looks like your standard mobile cash grab (or if it even looks like a mobile game).
Meanwhile, as we ponder the existence of a Persona 5 mobile RPG, we still have to confront the fact that there is no Persona 6 in sight. There is a Shin Megami Tensei concert headed to North America for the first time though.
