Live the life of Phantom Thieves: helping the world with mystery and style.

Collect famous and well-loved characters from the Persona franchise.

Manage your time and sort out your priorities: one day at a time.

Persona 5: The Phantom X (also called P5X) is a free-to-play RPG for Android and iOS devices. Some regions have access to a PC client available on Steam.

This is a spinoff of the story of the original Persona 5, told from the perspective of two new unaffiliated Phantom Thieves: ‘Wonder’ and ‘Cattle’. It’s going to be a game of juggling day-to-day living, socializing with peers and people from other walks of life, and fighting Shadows and people who have long strayed from the path of being properly functioning citizens.

Much of the original Persona core gameplay is retained in this live service version. The day/night cycle is present, though you won’t be maximizing time like in the mainline games. You can divide your time between earning wages, improving your protagonist’s stats, completing slice of life quests, or strengthening Social Links with other cast members. Game content involves plenty of dungeon crawling, whether it be moving around Paths in the Cattlemobile or navigating through Palaces in classic third-person. There are also boss challenges and limited-time stories to burn time with.

Gaming elements found in mobile titles are combined into P5X. Some of the most obvious aspects are the guided quests and destination markers. Avid followers of the Persona line of games may find this too much handholding, but auto-pathing is removed, and the game won’t stop you from taking another direction in case you don’t feel like completing the quest objective at once.

Personas still sit at the center of the game. There are a few ways of obtaining them in-game. Those that were carried from the mainline titles include a random chance of getting a Persona card after defeating enemies in battle. The other way is through fusing Personas in the Velvet Room. The latter method is best when vying for a 4-star or 5-star Persona, since some of their components are not obtained from enemy drops. Some rarer cards are won as event rewards.

Improving your Phantom Thieves is the same as in the original games. Increasing levels, enhancing equipment quality, and powering up Persona skills are the most obvious ones to see. Strengthening avenues exclusive to the protagonist equips the best Personas to handle most situations. Available Persona slots are fewer than what you’d normally have in the mainstream games, so choose what is best for a given challenge. Raising awareness of a Phantom Thief is achieved by obtaining duplicate characters; the process for doing this will be covered in the next part of this write-up.

Obtaining Phantom Thieves is where the character collector mechanic of mobile games rears its controversial head. P5X originals or named characters from other Persona games can be obtained by chance through banners under the Contracts menu. Meta Jewels can be converted to Golden Tickets for permanent contracts, Platinum Tickets for limited contracts, and Platinum Milicoins for weapon raffle boxes. There’s a 1 in 10 chance of obtaining a 4-star Phantom Thief, while the 5-star variants are 1 in 80. Weapons are a little more lenient, with 50 pulls before getting a 5-star rarity armament. These pull rates are within the standard rates in collector games, but always play with what you are willing to lose.

In summary, Persona 5: The Phantom X makes few adjustments and is a more accessible version of Atlus’ flagship game series, albeit watered-down in some areas.