5 gacha games that survived the Persona 5 crossover curse

With the recent closure announcements of both Nier Reincarnation and School Idol Festival 2, a certain meme has been making the rounds again: The Persona 5 crossover curse.

You’ve probably seen a variation of the above meme, detailing games that closed within 1 year of collaborating with Persona 5. There are a non-significant amount of gacha titles that have closed somewhat shortly after crossing over with Atlus’s hugely popular RPG.

However, when it comes to collabs, there are so many for Persona 5 that it would be weird if some of the games hadn’t closed down since — gacha game closures are an incredibly common occurrence in the industry.

With that in mind, here are 5 games that have survived the so-called Persona 5 curse.

Granblue Fantasy

Even if you’re not familiar with gacha games, you’ve likely head of Granblue Fantasy by now. With an anime, multiple fighting games, and an upcoming action RPG, the franchise has certainly has its own number of adaptions at this point.

Appearing in 2018 (and rerun again in 2023), the Thievery in Blue event had players teaming up with Joker and the Phantom Thieves after they end up in the world of Granblue Fantasy. Naturally, they end up having to deal with a number of events including the appearance of a Palace.

While multiple Phantom Thieves make an appearance during the event, only Joker was made available as a playable character for your crew.

Puzzle and Dragons

Despite a focus on the titular dragons, Puzzle and Dragons has seen the inclusion of a number of non-beast characters — primarily during crossover events.

In this case, the Persona collab event included characters from Persona 3, 4, and 5, featuring the protagonists and some of their friends.

While P5 protag made his appearance, the event rerun in 2020 also included Royal party member Kasumi Yoshizawa.

Identity V

Another survivor of the Persona 5 crossover curse, Identity V is a 1v4 (think Dead by Daylight) gacha game where the characters are represented as puppets.

In the case of the Persona 5 crossover events, (nearly) all of the Phantom Thieves were made playable via skins for the existing Identity V character. Morgana instead was relegated to an obtainable pet, which I’m sure he would not approve of.

Each costume featured the gang’s standard outfits, though you could access their Phantom Thief attire by awakening each.

BanG Dream! Girls Band Party!

Rhythm game BanG Dream! Girls Band Party! received its own Persona 5 collab in 2018, giving some of the game’s cast a Phantom Thief makeover. The actual Phantom Thieves don’t make an appearance, though some of the event stories mention events and characters from the game.

Oddly enough, despite the heavy Persona 5 theme, only one of the three music tracks (Life Will Change) is actually from that game. The other two were instead taken from Persona 3 (Kimi no kioku) and 4 (Reach Out to the Truth).

Another Eden

Another Eden is the most unique case on this list. While you’re able to keep collab content such as characters in the other games after the events are over, Another Eden is the only one where the event itself is also permanent.

Two Persona 5 events have been added to the game since launch, Bound Wills and the Hollow Puppeteer and its sequel Promises, Vows, and Rings. The first event added playable characters Joker and Morgana, with Violet and Skull joining in the sequel event.

On top of being a permanent event, the characters you get are actually quite useful for players that don’t intend to spend money on Another Eden. Even strong weapons for the Persona 5 cast are obtainable if you progress through the events.

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And that’s 5 games that have managed to survive the Persona 5 crossover curse. While all of these games are still receiving consistent updates, one day these too will likely have to shut down. At the very least, they’ve all managed to last far longer than a year after meeting with the Phantom Thieves.

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