The Phantom X Rewrites One Unwritten Rule from the Original

Although Persona 5: The Phantom X carries the name of Atlus’ popular JRPG series, it breaks several traditions that fans have come to expect from a Persona title. The nature of Persona 5: The Phantom X as a mobile gacha spin-off lends itself to a slightly different gameplay loop from a traditional Persona game. As a result, P5X flips the script on a key part of the original Persona 5‘s approach to its in-game activities and Metaverse dungeons.

P5X‘s mix of traditional Persona gameplay and gacha elements can be a double-edged sword for some fans. While many will feel at home with its core gameplay mechanics, like Persona’s elemental skills system and daily life activities, The Phantom X reframes these features in a way that will take some getting used to for longtime fans. In particular, P5X players will find that tackling the game’s Palaces is far different from the original game, and that’s largely due to the removal of an in-game deadline for completion.

Why Persona 5: The Phantom X Surpassing Royal’s Peak Player Count is Only the First Hurdle

Persona 5: The Phantom X has already claimed one major milestone, but that achievement is only a small part of its road to success.

Persona 5: The Phantom X’s Lack of Time Limits Removes a Major Barrier

The Original Persona 5 Revolved Around a Time Limit

Planning activities around a calendar system is a core part of the mainline Persona series, and Persona 5 raised the stakes by giving players a deadline for completing Palaces. The original game only allowed players to complete two daily life activities per day, one after school and one in the evening, and entering Mementos or a Palace took the place of both activity slots. With the limitations of a specific deadline that players needed to steal the target’s heart and defeat the Palace’s ruler by, Persona 5 required strategic planning to maximize the in-game time allotted.

Persona 5 Royal added the ability to perform one task inside Leblanc at night on days when players enter Mementos or a Palace.

There’s No Incentive to Blast Through a Palace in Persona 5: The Phantom X

As a side effect of Persona 5‘s in-game time limit, it became an unwritten rule for players looking to play the game as efficiently as possible to rush through a Palace in a single day so that they could spend the rest of their time before the deadline improving their social stats, hanging out with Confidants, or doing side quests in Mementos. However, The Phantom X makes this rule obsolete by removing deadlines for Palace completion, offering players no benefit for speeding through the dungeon. Part of this design is likely due to the pick-up-and-play nature of mobile games, where players typically only have time to engage in short bursts of gameplay during their daily logins. However, it requires players who are used to the classic Persona calendar system some time to adjust.

The Phantom X Introduces a New Type of Time Limit

Even without having to worry about deadlines for completing Persona 5: The Phantom X‘s Palaces, players will still need to deal with a different time limit. A standard feature of mobile gacha games is their reliance on real-time events and gates to keep players coming back to play each day, and P5X is no different. Limited-time banners for specific characters are a part of The Phantom X‘s gacha mechanics, and daily login rewards require players to spend a part of their real-life schedule opening the game if they want to claim these freebies.

Additionally, P5X’s Urban Life activities that can increase social stats or synergy with companions are still limited by real-life time gates. The Phantom X allows players to spend Action Points to participate in these Urban Life activities, with five total slots for each in-game day.

Time of Day	Activity Slots
After School	2
Evening	2
Night	1

After all five Action Points are spent, the in-game calendar will advance to the next day, and the activity slots open up again. However, players will still need to carefully consider how they spend their Action Points in The Phantom X, as they refresh in real time once per day at 8 pm UTC. So, while P5X doesn’t have a deadline for when players need to complete its dungeons, it still asks players to be mindful of how they spend their in-game time and requires longtime Persona fans to rethink their approach to the traditional calendar system.