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Forum - View topicPersona 5: The Phantom X Makes Smart Changes to the Traditional Persona Formula
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Dr. Wily
Posts: 872 |
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My lizard brain sees a Persona game and wants to go "gimme gimme gimme" but a Persona game without a calendar feels kinda... pointless? I mean by nature of being a mobile gacha game, it can't ever have a story with an end (which is actually one of the bad ends of regular P5 ironically). Ultimately I probably won't get it because I'm too afraid I'll end up pouring money into it, but I will definitely be interested watching people online doing playthroughs.
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LinkTSwordmaster
 Posts: 817 Location: PA / USA |
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I argue that's a failing of some of the games' (P4, P5) narrative concepts that Persona 2 was just fine without a calendar, and yet some players seem to have this exact impression about the series as a whole. It made sense to have it in Persona 3 given what the subject matter was about, but with P4 and then especially P5, the justification for having it becomes less and less tied to it being integral to the plot. The cat in the OG release of P5 shutting you down at night or telling you where to go turns into "the developers couldn't think of any content to go here", or "they want you to progress the game at a slower pace, so Cat says no". Personally, I'm cautiously optimistic about Phantom X. It has the potential to be a solid Megami Tensei game, and I get the vibes that we wouldn't even have it at all had they not been trying to make a Gacha/F2P title, so outside of some feedback I'm hearing that the SEA version was a bit stingy with traditional EXP and progression rewards, I'm fine to give this a fair shot. Persona 4 has a MASSIVE problem, one I think nearly knocks the legs out from under it - the cast is too large. There's too many party members to pick from, but worse than that, the calendar system necessitates that it takes a certain period of time to investigate a new party character's personal dungeon. This means that by the time you get a character like Naoto added to your party, the majority of the game is already over - you barely get a chance to spend time with them compared to the other party cast. If in theory, you could re-roll your Phantom X account until you reach ideal starting conditions where you are awarded most of the available characters, you can instantly just hit the ground running and get to know whichever character you like - in that regard, I don't mind a Gacha game conceptually - the problem usually lies in the execution/monetisation & how frequently/likely you are to get a new party member at all. |
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KefkaesqueXIII
Posts: 159 |
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As someone who started with P4 and has played P3/4/5/Metaphor each multiple times, I have to agree with LinkT.
The calendar was intregal to P3 and its themes, especially when the original release was made with the expectation that a "Max All S.Links" run wouldn't actually be possible (the director was supposedly surprised to learn that players had found a way, which is why there was no in-game reward for doing it until the FES release), but none of the other games have really capitalized on it as anything but as an "I guess this is our identity now" mechanical inclusion. Each successive entry/rerelease/remake has only made the calendar less of a restriction to what can be accomplished in a playthrough, and instead just a restriction on what can be done in the immediate moment (insert Morgana saying "go to bed" here). And as they make it easier to do everything, they wind up hurting the pacing. Especially towards the end, as the player runs out of stuff they're interested in doing. Metaphor is probably the greatest victim of this, as a decent player going in blind can easily wind up with nothing left to do but twiddle their thumbs for the last couple in-game weeks waiting for the door to the final dungeon to open up. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 7240 |
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Damn I know Morgana could be annoying but that’s no reason to unperson him. |
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Tenebrae
Posts: 505 |
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Is the word on their filter list or something, as the article doesn't call the game a gacha game when it is?
As soon as it mentioned removing the calendar I thought, this must be a gacha game with limited events as that's the most obvious rationale for the change (and because it runs on mobile platforms). |
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MFrontier
Posts: 20109 |
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Surprised this isn't seemingly getting dubbed considering it's connected to the Persona franchise.
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Vanadise
 Posts: 600 |
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It doesn't specifically call it a gacha game, although the article does mention briefly that the game has microtransactions and involves pulling for characters. I do hate how previews like this treat gacha games as though they are respectable entries in video game series and not just predatory slot machines, but that's just the way it is nowadays. |
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Arale Kurashiki
Posts: 861 |
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Yeah, any debate about how the removal of the calendar will affect the Persona formula is completely irrelevant when the actual game design here is the same damn slot machine, with the superficial veneer of Persona 5's gameplay plastered on top. Just like usual.
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LinkTSwordmaster
Posts: 817 Location: PA / USA |
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I am slightly suspicious Sega is trying not to draw attention to that here. The counterpoint to that line of thinking though is we're ACTUALLY going to get adult-age party characters BECAUSE this is Gacha. I would infinitely prefer this just be a standard, offline entry, but when you get a game like Mobius Final Fantasy or Wizardry Daphne that actually bury you in value and don't try to rob you of your money at every single turn, it is actually possible to have a Gacha game that can be fun if it's not made with the sole intention to be predatory. Alternatively, it can turn out like PangYa where you have no hope of winning unless you drop $50+ each week because outfits add character stats and you won't be able to keep up with other players without them. |
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oilers2007
Posts: 177 |
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That seems pretty close minded, especially when some of the biggest and beloved games out there are gacha like mihoyoverse stuff. Being a gacha doesn't make something inherently bad. |
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Dr. Wily
Posts: 872 |
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I mean you're right that they're predatory slot machines but so many games are huge on microtransactions that even ones you don't think of as "gacha games" at first kind of are if you think about it too hard. Unfortunately that's just the state of the industry in 2025. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 5308 |
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I mean it...kinda does? Lots of people can like a bad thing, but that doesn't make it any less bad. Making people pay, not for actual content itself, but for the mere chance of obtaining said content, is inherently predatory in nature. Maybe instead of that try making a game that's good enough that people will want to pay money for, y'know, a complete game. |
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Tenebrae
Posts: 505 |
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Huh, maybe I've been playing the wrong (right) gachas then, but I'm fully F2P (free-to-play) in all that I play or have ever played. Longest stretch being 4.5 years and counting. In the two that I play on full endgame meta-aware level (Genshin and Star Rail), ever since I got to the point where I had good teams built up, I've been consistently getting maximum ratings in all of their rotating endgame modes. But I also come from the perspective that spending money on gacha games is an irrational proposition.
For those who don't know gacha games, there's basically two reasons to acquire characters. The first is waifu / husbando collectors who get a character because they like them. The second is to build teams of powerful characters that synergzie well together and can clear the games' most difficult (aka endgame) content. The gacha works generally like this in most that I've played: you have to acquire specific ingame curreny either by playing the game or spending real money. You then spend said currency to have a chance to acquire the featured character (this is called "pulling" or "rolling"). The featured characters are up only a few at a time and for a limited amount of time, rotating in and out. Basically to build up FOMO. At times popular characters may get frequent reruns because they have sold well. Here the concepts of fifty-fifty, pity and guarantee come in. A 50/50 means when you succeed in your pull / roll, you actually have a 50% chance to get the featured character, and 50% chance to instead get a character from a standard pool (of less powerful characters). The base success chance in Mihoyo's games is 0.6%. Pity means the game keeps count of your failed attempts, and when you have failed enough times, it gives you automatic success. In Mihoyo's games the pity is usually at 90 attempts, but the chance starts going up at 74th attempt; on the average you spend ~80 attempts. A guarantee means if your first success did not get you the featured character (you lost the 50/50 check), your second success is guaranteed to give you the featured character. The guarantee resets after this. Some gachas make it even easier, and some do not have mechanics like these at all. There's also been some recent changes, like Mihoyo being required to display clear monetary costs involved and having to sell the ingame currency in discrete amounts instead of purposefully unwieldy lumps. And an age check in USA, I hear. |
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Kalisia
 Posts: 71 |
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That's enough internet for today everyone, let's go to sleep
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