Persona 5: The Phantom X has been out in the West for only a week and a half, but in China, the gacha game has been out for over a year. As a result, most of the world is far behind the Chinese audience on story and character updates. Rather than letting most players lag behind, Atlus and developer Black Wings Game Studio have announced they’re speeding up the story rollout for other territories. This is a good thing for those who are worried about spoilers, but some players are concerned that an accelerated rollout might impact the broader gacha mechanics and meta.
On July 9, Atlus held a livestream to break down The Phantom X’s 1.1 update. The showcase covered some broad strokes like upcoming story content, new characters, and additional environments coming to the game. While most of the stream was in Japanese, fans have translated some relevant details for English-speaking audiences, including the confirmation that story updates will be rolling out at a faster pace to bring everyone up to speed.
This will also involve some adjustments to events, character release timing, and balance, although the stream didn’t delve into the specifics on this. That lack of specificity has some fans concerned about how the faster rollout of events and characters might affect the flow of the game.
“At worst, people feel like power creep is too fast and there is no reason to pull,” zhirzzh wrote on the Phantom X subreddit. “At best, with more rewards, you lose the people who want to play it as a side-game by moving too fast for them, then slow back down again and lose the people [who play it as their primary gacha game].”
Some folks feel that if The Phantom X compensates players with additional currency to accommodate for the (theoretically) shorter events, this could be a non-issue, but others have enjoyed being behind the Chinese playerbase because they get a sneak peek at characters and events months in advance.
“I’d be fine with this if they extend every banner and/or give us compensation gem-wise,” Sirepuns wrote in the same thread. “But honestly, I prefer lagging by a year cuz it means I get to know a year in advance what I’m saving for.”
Ultimately, we’ll have to wait and see what the new cadence looks like to see how players adapt. At any rate, it does mean western audiences will get new story content more quickly, and hopefully it picks up after the game’s nonsensical “Subway Slammer” plotline, which has become the Persona community’s latest inside joke. Yusuke Nitta, the scenario planner on the original Persona 5, was brought in to help get The Phantom X’s story on track after the game’s third chapter.