It is a mobile game, but also a persona
Even today, when mobile games have become an indispensable part of the game market, mobile games are still an unacceptable form and carrier for some players. In addition to the strange feeling of the way you have always played, the excessive difference between the upper and lower limits of mobile games is also an important reason for this psychology - after all, the exaggerated lower limit of inferior mobile games is really unbearable to look at.
Among the endless mobile games, "IP authorized mobile games" can be called the hardest hit area of inferior mobile games, relying on the feelings of IP to "change skins and make money", constantly consuming the enthusiasm of players. Over time, "miserable mobile games" has become the most significant first reaction of players to "IP authorized mobile games".
Therefore, even with a high-quality promotional PV and even with the original production team invited to jointly develop, "Persona: Phantom of the Night" still did not get much trust from players. In the people, ridicule such as "the first charge of 6 pieces to send Kaguya, the cumulative full of 648 to send the moon to read the thief god, the cumulative recharge of 6480 to send tens of thousands of proverbs skill cards" are also everywhere.
However, the production team of "Persona: Phantom of the Night" also seems to have a deep understanding of the current situation of "IP licensed mobile games", and it is more intuitive to release the actual content as soon as possible than repeatedly promoting the nature of the game. The first test of Persona: Phantom of the Night was released less than 2 weeks apart. And I was able to pass this test and find out the truth of "Persona: Phantom of the Night" with a verification mentality.
The promotional PV of "Persona: Phantom of the Night" left the most intuitive impression on players, which is its outstanding graphic expression. In addition to highly restoring the art style of "Persona 5", the quality of the game graphics itself has also been completely improved. Not only is the modeling of characters and scenes more detailed, but the movements of characters and the use of light are also more modern. One of the things that impressed me the most was the portrayal of Shibuya's rainy night, which gave me a feeling of "Japanese next-generation".
However, in fact, after handing "Persona: Phantom of the Night", the game's graphics performance is not as stunning as in the PV, and the overall picture quality has shrunk slightly. But then again, it's not uncommon for the actual effect of the game to shrink compared to the advertised PV, but rather a norm. Moreover, the shrinkage of "Persona: Phantom of the Night" is only a slight reduction in picture quality, it just does not reproduce the most amazing "Shibuya Rainy Night" in PV - as a mobile game, such graphic expression is already excellent.
Although the graphics are slightly reduced, the portrayal of game details in Persona: Phantom of the Night completely fills this small gap.
In this work, the up and down of the escalator must follow the logic of the direction, and if you forcibly reverse it, you will be kindly reminded by "Luffel".
When crossing Shibuya's most famous intersection, players are also asked to obey traffic rules. When the light is green, you can move freely and seamlessly through the scenes of Shibuya, but when you are at the red light, you cannot cross the street and wait for the green light to arrive, or skip the waiting time and teleport to the opposite side of the zebra crossing.
Not only that, in "Persona: Phantom of the Night", we can also see many Easter eggs of the "Persona" series. In the square in front of Shibuya, as in the game book, there is a poster of the idol Persona Persona 4, Riyo Kutsukawa. When stepping into the shopping street, the classic and magical TV shopping BGM will ring in your ears.
Detail portrayal has always been a design that is favorable. The actual performance of "Persona: Phantom of the Night" can definitely be called a nuanced sentence, and it is not a simple art style parody of "Persona 5". And in this rich detail portrayal, I can also feel the help of ATLUS and Wada Kazuhisa in the game production process, after all, the more details, the more sophistication, and the more in-depth the supervision.
Compared to "Persona 5", the worldview of "Persona: Phantom of the Night" revolves around a new keyword "desireless". "No desire" means "low desire", and our protagonist lives in such a "low desire" era.
The protagonist, who is in the second year of "Jiji High School", currently lives alone at home in Tokyo's Zajiya due to his parents' long trips abroad. Due to a chance chance, he said goodbye to his "desirelessness", awakened the mask of personality, and was then involved in a series of events.
The protagonist of this work, codenamed "Wonder", has a character design that has been the main character design since the 3rd generation of the series. Taught by "demon illustrator" Kazuma Kaneko, Naruki Fukujima follows the concept of "showing ancient things with modern elements" in the design of personality masks.
In Persona: Phantom of the Night, I was able to get a fuller look at "Wonder's" personality mask "Arnosik". It changed from the historical image of holding a double axe to a more fashionable axe gun, which is consistent with the style of the series, and also makes me feel more intuitively the involvement of Naruki Fukujima in the art field.
In addition, my previous conjecture about the protagonist's "Neuschwan Room" was confirmed, and the protagonist's exclusive "Velvet Room" is an "undersea tunnel dug in the sea of hearts". Here we can not only meet the old friend "Igor", but also meet the new blue-clad assistant "Merope", which provides the protagonist with various convenient functions in terms of personality masks.
In terms of the most direct "selling appearance", "Persona: Phantom of the Night" did not only show a prominent art style in the test. The details and settings of the game are enough to withstand scrutiny, and there is no so-called "inferior quality" or "cheapness". It is not the meaning of underestimating the Perfect World game, but the "positive" taste of "Persona: Phantom of the Night" is probably inseparable from a lot of help from ATLUS, and the deep cooperation does not seem to be just lip service.
In terms of gameplay, "Persona: Phantom of the Night" also inherits the two core systems of "Persona 5": otherworld adventure and urban life, and has made corresponding innovations for this.
The otherworldly world of "Persona 5" has two manifestations, namely the "impression space" that represents the desire of the masses and the "palace" of the person with strong desire. And "Persona: Phantom of the Night" follows these two otherworldly forms.
The "Impression Space", which undertook the function of "leveling up and brushing money" in the original game, has not changed its positioning in "Persona: Phantom of the Night".
Regardless, Persona: Phantom of the Night is still a mobile game, and the design of the game such as everyday, stamina, materials, etc. is still there. In "Impression Space", players can obtain various materials for developing characters, weapons, and personality masks. However, given that the "impression space" in the original work is like this, as long as it is not very sensitive to the common setting of "consuming 20 points of stamina", there is no sense of violation.
Compared with the more everyday "impression space", the "palace" design of "Persona: Phantom of the Night" is quite remarkable. In "Persona 5", the "palace" of each big man has a fairly exaggerated scale, and the game does not force the completion of the one-time raid, allowing players to explore in several days.
Although "Persona: Phantom of the Night" is a mobile game, it restores the "palace" scale of "Persona 5", and shows an excellent design level under the large-scale "palace".
In this test, the "new monster bandits" are raided by the "palace" of baseball player "Yuyuki Kiuchi". The "palace" that looks like a baseball hall is actually an exhibition hall that fully displays the arrogance and vanity of "Yuyuki Kiuchi".
The museum is divided into several floors and several areas according to different functions, each with its own unique puzzle solving mechanism. By acquiring different items, players can travel to locations that are inaccessible when they first set foot in order to fight strong enemies or obtain treasures. In the process of raiding, the "palace" will gradually open up roads between regions, and eventually form a complete and connected map. The overall length of the process is guaranteed, the design is quite in place, and with the new songs sung by Lyn, the "Palace" exploration was definitely the most amazing part of this test.
In terms of combat, Persona: Phantom of the Night has made a certain expansion of the system of "Persona 5".
In Persona 5, the combat system itself is actually less complicated than the turn-based games, and the game chooses to put more depth on the development of personality masks. In order to adapt to the pace of the mobile game, Persona: Phantom of the Night needs to pull the focus back to the combat itself.
In this game, the order of the characters' actions has been visualized, the former "One more" system has been modified, and the "High light" system, which also deals a lot of damage, has been introduced to enrich the strategy of battle.
But the biggest change is the revision of the "weakness strike" in this book. In Persona 5, both enemies and friends fall to the ground when attacked by weaknesses, while in Persona: Phantom of the Night, the game introduces the setting of "fall value" - characters will only be knocked down after being attacked by weaknesses a certain number of times. The continuous operation of mobile games is difficult to avoid the continuous evolution of the mechanism, and the introduction of "fall value" provides a basis for subsequent updates, and also enriches the strategy of the battle itself.
Of course, the classic personality mask cultivation, total attack and other settings of the series still exist. And even for minor characters that are not related to the main story, "Persona: Phantom of the Night" has drawn a fairly high-quality total attack settlement stand-up for it. It can be seen that "Persona: Phantom of the Night" only shifts the focus from personality mask cultivation to the battle itself, and does not abandon too many traditional designs.
Even in another world, our protagonist is still an "ordinary" high school student in reality, and urban life is essential for Persona 5, as well as for Persona: Phantom of the Night.
By spending points, players can choose daily activities in reality, either part-time jobs, studies, or meeting up with others to develop their abilities and relationships. And baseball, fishing and other mini-games have also been retained, which is not much different from "Persona 5".
In addition, since the protagonist of this game does not live in the attic of a coffee shop like "Joker", he can also do some hobbies when living alone, such as cooking or raising flowers, which is far richer than "Joker" simply adding some nutrients to flowers.
It is also worth mentioning that although this work can also establish synergistic relationships with different characters like "Persona 5", it does not continue the tradition of the series and associate the characters with "Great Alkana", but directly indicates the character name, and the lines when establishing the relationship have also changed slightly. There may be some implications, but due to the limitations of the test, it is not yet known.
Compared with the picture performance, "Persona: Phantom of the Night" undoubtedly has more to do in terms of gameplay. It not only restores the classic gameplay mode of "Persona 5", but also takes into account the gameplay characteristics of the mobile game genre. In terms of actual performance, "Persona: Phantom of the Night" has done a good job in combining these two aspects, not only the original gameplay, but also made a lot of things of its own.
However, as a non-buyout mobile game, the krypton gold project has always been the focus that players care about the most, and they can't avoid it. The good news is that "Persona: Phantom of the Night" does not show its attributes similar to "strong PVP", "combat power improvement" and "VIP level" and other krypton gold mobile games. Most of the content of the game is still reflected in the gameplay and excellent plot, which is more similar to a "continuously updated single-player mobile game".
But on the other hand, "Persona: Phantom of the Night" does have some common "krypton gold points": the cultivation of characters, the cultivation of personality masks, and the enhancement of weapons, which are all important contents on the player's growth path. This test did not open up the common "card draw" function, and perhaps the production team is still figuring out a form of monetization that is most suitable for Persona: Phantom of the Night, but hopefully this path will eventually maintain a good balance between players and games.
For players who love "Persona 5", this test directly proves one thing: "Persona: Phantom of the Night" is definitely not an "inferior skin-changing mobile game" that "destroys IP", but an important work that can reflect the in-depth cooperation between Perfect World Games and ATLUS in both appearance and core. The quality it has shown so far is in line with or even exceeded my expectations as a veteran of the series.
However, the premise of all rational evaluation is to take off the "colored glasses" of "IP authorized mobile games" and accept the form of mobile games. At least for me, Persona: Phantom of the Night is indeed a mobile game, and it does deserve the title of "Persona".