[Persona: Phantom of the Night] Review: This is very P5, but you have the smell of a domestic second tour

With the success of phenomenal mobile games such as "Genshin" in recent years, many manufacturers and IPs that are deeply engaged in PC and console platforms are also eager to try and want to break into the mobile game market.

IN FACT, SINCE THE ERA OF THE SYMBIAN SYSTEM, THERE HAVE BEEN MANY MASTERPIECES THAT HAVE LAUNCHED MOBILE GAMES BASED ON THE JAVA SYSTEM, AND MANY OF THEM HAVE ACHIEVED A VERY GOOD REPUTATION, BUT DUE TO THE PROBLEM OF CRACKING AND PIRACY, REVENUE HAS NOT BEEN ABLE TO ACHIEVE BETTER RESULTS.

Until recent years, with the mature mobile game payment model explored by major manufacturers, many console/PC platform game IPs have obtained good mobile game revenue through licensing or porting.

Of course, there are many games that intend to imitate the two-dimensional mobile game revenue model to achieve success, "Persona: Phantom of the Night" (hereinafter referred to as: P5X) belongs to the best IP licensing adaptation product I have seen in recent years, but I privately think that the pricing strategy of too "second game" may end up being unflattering to many parties.

Pure P5 flavor plot Highly restored art

P5X is licensed by SEGA and ATLUS is deeply involved in the production of P5 series mobile game works, of which Kazuhisa Wada is responsible for game design and art supervision, character design is completed by Naruki Fukujima, and the battle soundtrack is also sung by lyn, and the production team is quite reliable.

Specific to the quality of the final presentation of the game, whether in terms of art style and character design, it is indeed very P5, including the interpretation of the plot advancement and even the texture of the UI framework are no different from other original works, and the visual impact is extremely strong.

The design of the red, black and white classic P5 three-color + irregular UI frame is almost the standard of the P5 series, and it is also the most recognizable feature of the P5 style, I believe that many players who surf with high intensity have played the popular "P5 declaration generator" before, and its typical P5 taste is achieved by this design.

The same is true for P5X, in fact, when you really get started, you will even feel that P5X in addition to redesigning part of the UI, many of the character materials use the storyboard and perspective design of previous works, and the main thing is an original flavor.

The plot cutscenes with a strong sense of anime are also very Japanese-style, and under the world view of the original P5, it tells a story of "no desire and no desire for the protagonist to discover his true desire and do what he wants to do". It is worth noting that the campus name of this work is "Ji Scrape", which is a homonym for "exhaustion" in Japanese, and it is also used as the theme of the story as the homonym "Xiu Ji" and "prisoner" in the original P5 work.

The protagonist finds that he has no desire when filling out the volunteer, comes to the velvet room when he sleeps in class, and discovers the otherworld navigation app in the subsequent plot, and accidentally awakens the personality mask and becomes a strange thief to form his own monster thief team.

During this period, the protagonist played by the player will get acquainted with the mascot, Luffel the owl, and the remnants of the monster thieves of the previous game in the consciousness space, of course, there are many new characters and characters. Interestingly, in addition to the pre-guide, mascot, and tool maker, the owl Luffel can also transform into a car for the player to drive.

In addition, the plot flow, character dialogue and other content in this work are fully dubbed in Japanese, and the characters in the previous work are also operated by P5 original CV, and the soundtrack is also a combination of new and old, which is very right. Therefore, whether it is from the details of the story or the very P5-style art, P5X can be regarded as a P5 crossover work comparable to the main masterpiece.

Double-line parallel gameplay Authentic battles

In the past many cross-border works of console/PC series IP, it is often aimed at the mobile game side to be more comprehensive "mobile game", that is, greatly reducing the long-term and time-consuming content of the game and easing the game burden when players are online.

After all, for many mobile game depth players, most of the time the mobile game to be played will be divided into "main game" and "secondary game" for different treatment, the main game has good playability, high return on time investment, and the corresponding daily time consumption is longer, and the secondary game is the opposite. Many mobile games do not have the quality to become the main game, and often choose a lightweight strategy.

But what am I playing with P5? It is an excellent turn-based battle, an excellent daily campus plot, and if it becomes a mobile game, it may also add a "deep and fulfilling cultivation system", so P5X has become a work that satisfies this series of fantasies.

First of all, P5X does not make too many lightweight designs for mobile games (although the plot can obviously be seen to be lazy), retaining the excellent campus daily plot of the P5 series.

The player plays as a high school student who can explore the adventure mode of life around multiple areas and sections of the city in a box-like external world, including but not limited to listening to classes, studying, exercising, working, etc., etc., which will also provide some ability improvement for the protagonist. There will also be some content on the side line to advance the plot, interaction, dating, etc. with NPCs, which can be used to improve favorability and get rewards.

This set of gameplay is not much different from other works of P5, and is more similar to an RPG cultivation gameplay of "working to earn money - spending money to improve ability". But P5X's daily routine is divided into after-school, evening, and evening phases, with activities advancing time, and going home to rest after the evening arrives.

In the home scene after returning home, you can also obtain some attribute enhancement and recovery props through planting, cooking and other behaviors, and there are also appearance effects such as dress-up.

The otherworldly gameplay that focuses on combat is more complicated, but overall it is similar to P5R's turn-based combat method, but some changes have been made for mobile games (and commercialization).

The player's team is equipped with four team members and a support character, four of which must include the protagonist, and the remaining three characters are the traditional mobile game "the plot sends a few usable, most of the powerful high stars rely on the draw" acquisition method.

However, the protagonist of P5X should be the most powerful and flexible character among all characters, compared to other character attributes, skill fixed settings, the protagonist's ability comes from the mask used, the protagonist can be equipped with three masks at the same time, each mask will have different active and passive skills, so logically everyone can adjust the protagonist's skills according to their own needs, extremely flexible.

Mask acquisition is also a non-mandatory payment of quests, wild monsters, and card draw dog food acquisition, and after acquisition, crafting and training can also change the skill effect of the mask, and the depth of cultivation is very interesting.

Entering a single battle, compared to the weak and soft turn-based system of the recently popular "Honkai: Star Dome Railway", P5X is complex to the extreme, including attribute restraint, reverse restraint (where restraint can hit weak, reverse restraint will reduce damage/ineffective), pistol shooting, critical weak weak, highlight moments, support character tricks, full weak knockdown total attack, etc.

Attribute restraint is relatively easy to understand, weak based on restraint relationship is a complex version of broken shield, monsters will be stunned after restraint attacks, and when all enemies are stunned, they can perform total attacks to hit high AOE. (weak also works for itself in P5X)

This is the core system of the P5 series, and the attack team almost always revolves around this design. But the good thing... Although the combat system is complex, most of the daily and simple content has double speed and automatic combat, which is considered a mobile game gospel!

The gameplay involved in the current test is the temple and impression space, as well as a swan trial (abyss) of pure combat power testing.

The hall is close to the "main gameplay" of the P5 series of works, there are some decryption and exploration elements, and there are also card level settings; The impression space can be seen as similar exploration content to the map of "Honkai: Star Dome Railway", in which in addition to the wild monsters that drop materials and masks, there are also gem monsters that drop extra drops, experience books, money, and copies of upgrade materials (Earth Vein!! ) and the elite monster that drops extra items, which has a strong sense of sight.

Oh yes, find a ticket on the map to hand it over to the platform, and you can also increase the Idol level ticket level, get a lot of experience, material rewards, and unlock new areas.

As for the trial, it is the abyss of playing monsters and calculating points, and it is currently necessary to hit more weak damage to get a higher score, which is also more in line with the consistent style of P5.

Thoroughbred mobile game revenue strategy

Compared with the previous test, the biggest difference between this test and the previous test is the test of paid content. I believe that many players saw that I said earlier that the characters will be chrysanthemumized, in fact, the paid content displayed by P5X is currently benchmarked against the first-line and second-game level.

0.6% (excluding the probability of guarantee) / 1.7% (including the probability of guarantee) + size guarantee The two-game standard general pool + UP pool + weapon pool setting makes people stunned, and the price of 15 pieces is slightly lower than the industry level is not cheap.

Among them, the general pool does not introduce much, the UP pool is a 50% probability size guarantee setting, that is, the small guarantee 50% probability is UP, and the 50% probability is crooked.

Only weapons are produced in the weapon pool, and regardless of the quality (3-6 stars), they are limited to characters, that is, even a 3-star weapon can only be equipped by one character.

However, in fact, weapons also produce four-star quality and above in non-paid ways such as map chests, and they can be gradually completed as long as they are played.

What monthly card battle pass is the current mobile game standard naturally needless to say, the main paid content of P5X is the above, you can consider it yourself.

But subjectively, I feel that the P5X is currently priced within acceptable terms of quality and content. What I'm more worried about is that for a work that has no obvious advantage in the gameplay under the P5 series and the previous games, P5X may have some problems in the future due to continuous update operations and revenue.

For example, everyone's favorite "I draw hundreds of characters I want, enough for me to buy all the previous works of Persona" is a huge paradox that this type of work has to face, and it is not easy to let players of the P5 series continue to play in P5X and pay willingly, depending on whether the subsequent plot updates and new character designs can reach the height of the traditional second game that makes people "pay for love".

For pan-two-dimensional/mobile game players who are not P5 core players, P5X's current long plot and daily occupation time and slightly complex combat gameplay may not meet the taste of players, and there are also unpredictable problems.

It can only be said that P5X is an excellent work in my opinion for console/PC mobile game crossover, but it is not easy to satisfy P5 old players and "not smash the signboard", but also attract as many pan-users as possible to join the game and create revenue.