Persona 5: The Phantom X just had its lowest retention in a Persona game ever, according to the game-tracking website HowLongToBeat.
Marking its annual statistics wrap-up, HowLongToBeat.com recently revealed the 10 games of 2025 with the most player retirements. Titles like Delta Force saw a 14.7 percent chance of players abandoning the game, while the new open-world Wuxia title Where Winds Meet posted at 13.1 percent.
Persona 5: The Phantom X currently sits at the number one spot with 16% of its recorded playerbase abandoning the game.
Why Players are Dropping Persona 5: The Phantom X
Atlus has always been known for its solid track record of providing single-player JRPGs in the market, but its continuous milking of the Persona 5 franchise has attracted numerous fan concerns, especially those who are impatiently waiting for Persona 6.
The Phantom X is a gacha game stapled with the core elements of Persona 5. It has a familiar social calendar system, flashy turn-based combat, and the same acid-jazz soundtrack. What it doesn’t have is a structured story and the nuanced writing from the mainline Persona entries. Its repetitive NPC banter and less meaningful character arcs are a victim of its live-service gacha system, where players are constantly being drip-fed content every few months.
Persona 5: The Phantom X's Live-Service Potential
A Persona 5 gacha game was a no-brainer. Atlus knows there’s money to be made in the gacha department, but they need to pull this off well. The Phantom X does many things right, especially since much of the original game’s daily activity loop already lends itself to a gacha-style experience.
Apart from its shoddy writing and fragmented storytelling, gacha games like these often attract controversies over their microtransactions. The Phantom X is no exception, and these systems are pushing first-time players to give up once they hit progression walls, forcing them to purchase upgrades or pull for top-tier characters from the current banner.
It’s far removed from the Persona gameplay fans are familiar with. Despite retaining its turn-based JRPG combat, it’s a game that leans heavily on stat checks, which is pretty common in Gacha games. Players unable to upgrade or purchase the best heroes may encounter tankier enemies.
Persona 5: The Phantom X has attracted an audience of 1.5 million downloads after its global launch in June 2025. For a free game, it had a great start, but it has since faced a steep decline in playerbase. When it launched on Steam, it garnered over 45,000 concurrent players, but the numbers has dipped since then with a daily average of 1-2 thousand players. To make matters worse, The Phantom X’s regional release limits thousands of players from playing it.
While The Phantom X is a gacha game, its initial numbers aren’t too good, and it's likely caused by the myriad of issues it needs to work on.
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