F2P JRPG Persona5: The Phantom X Tops Franchise Charts Hours After Launch Despite Fan Gripes

Persona5: The Phantom Xlaunched earlier this week as a free-to-play JRPG spin-off of Persona5 Royal, and within the first 48 hours of the game’s launch it has already become the second most popular game in the Persona franchise, at least if the Steam numbers are anything to go by. According to SteamDB, which tracks concurrent player counts, Persona5: The Phantom X has already reached a peak concurrent player count of 41,622 players, which is over 6,000 higher than Persona 5 Royal, which launched in 2022. Persona5: The Phantom X also launched simultaneously on the Google Play Store, where it has already surpassed 500,000 downloads, and on the Apple App Store.

At the time of writing, the only Persona game that still maintains a higher all-time peak concurrent player count than Persona5: The Phantom X is Persona 3 Reload, which launched on Steam in January 2024 and almost immediately peaked at 45,002 concurrent players. Part of the reason for the success of The Phantom X is likely the free-to-play nature, and despite the solid player count, not everything about the launch is positive, with the current Steam review rating sitting at a rather mediocre 71% positive. Most of the negative reviews on the Steam Store page point to aggressive monetization and gacha mechanics, which are often perceived as predatory, although there are many reviews that still praise the game for not taking the gacha side too far and delivering a game that sticks to the JRPG roots of the Persona games. Persona5: The Phantom X features heavily stylized visuals typical of a Persona game, and turn-based spectacle combat, and the story follows a high school student who goes on nightly adventures to thwart villains and bring back order to the world.