Phasmophobia: Story, scenario, and writing appear 0.1 times as often as usual in Japanese reviews
Players writing reviews in Japanese mention story and scenario far less often than other topics. The sample covers 2,039 Japanese-language reviews posted between September 2020 and October 2026.
Own research by 648 News. Every figure in this article was counted by us from 2,039 Steam reviews written in Japanese, collected between 2020-09-26 and 2026-10-31.
Collected numbers versus Steam totals
The collected sample contains 2,039 reviews written in Japanese. Ninety-one point nine percent of them recommend the game. This share matches Steam's own figure for the whole history of the game, which also sits at 91.9 percent across 2,037 total reviews fetched on November 11, 2026. The classified sample covers 2,039 entries. The median playtime behind the reviews is 24.0 hours. The first review was posted on September 26, 2020, and the last on October 31, 2026.
The numbers
Story and graphics appear less often than usual
Story, scenario, and writing appear in only 1.2 percent of the classified reviews, compared to a baseline of 10.5 percent across the 183 followed titles. Graphics, art direction appears in 3.5 percent of the reviews, well below the 10.0 percent baseline. Gameplay, combat, and core mechanics appear in 43.7 percent of the classified reviews. Amount of content, length, and replayability comes up in 18.7 percent. Online play, multiplayer, and servers are mentioned in 7.9 percent. Characters, character design appears in 3.8 percent. Difficulty, balance is discussed in 3.1 percent. UI, controls, key bindings, controller support is mentioned in 2.4 percent. Music, sound, voice acting appears in 2.3 percent. Price, value for money, DLC pricing is raised in 1.6 percent. Developer or publisher conduct, update policy is mentioned in 0.5 percent. Japanese localization and translation quality appears in 0.5 percent. PC port quality, Steam Deck is discussed in 0.5 percent.
総合すると、知識・観察・注意力、根気、忍耐、冷静さのゲームです。
Overall, it is a game of knowledge, observation, attention, patience, endurance, and calmness.
Performance problems split opinions
Performance, optimization, bugs, and crashes split opinions between the two groups. Thirty point one percent of reviews that do not recommend the game mention this topic, compared to 3.3 percent of recommending reviews. The gap reaches 26.8 percentage points. Complaints about performance are raised far more often by dissatisfied reviewers than by satisfied ones. The topic appears in 5.5 percent of all classified reviews. Difficulty, balance is mentioned in 3.1 percent of all classified reviews, with 4.2 percent of negative reviews raising it. Characters, character design appears in 3.8 percent of all classified reviews, while 1.2 percent of negative reviews mention it. UI, controls, key bindings, controller support is discussed in 2.4 percent of all classified reviews. Music, sound, voice acting appears in 2.3 percent of all classified reviews. Price, value for money, DLC pricing is raised in 1.6 percent of all classified reviews. Developer or publisher conduct, update policy is mentioned in 0.5 percent of all classified reviews. Japanese localization and translation quality appears in 0.5 percent of all classified reviews. PC port quality, Steam Deck is discussed in 0.5 percent of all classified reviews.
ホラー演出の怖さと好奇心のバランスがとてもよくいいゲーム。
The balance between the horror presentation and curiosity is excellent.
Short sessions versus long sessions
The quarter of reviewers with the least play time recommended the game at a rate of 88.4 percent. Their sessions lasted up to 8.2 hours. The quarter with the most play time recommended it at 91.7 percent, with sessions starting from 69.9 hours. The difference between the two groups is 3.3 percentage points, with a p-value of 0.075. Reviewers with short sessions talk most about gameplay, combat, and core mechanics at 40.3 percent. They mention amount of content, length, and replayability at 14.9 percent. Online play, multiplayer, and servers appear in 8.8 percent of their reviews. Reviewers with long sessions talk most about the same topic at 50.9 percent. They discuss amount of content, length, and replayability at 26.9 percent. Online play, multiplayer, and servers appear in 9.8 percent of their reviews.
Methodology and sources
Data
Steam user reviews, retrieved with Steam's public review listing between 2020-09-26 and 2026-10-31: 2,039 written in Japanese. Steam's own all-time totals for Phasmophobia were read on 2026-11-11.
How the reviews were classified
Every review was read by a language model, which rated how positive it is, how much concrete detail it gives, and which of 15 fixed topics it talks about. The counts and percentages in this article were then computed from those labels in ordinary code, not by the model. Automatic classification makes mistakes, so single percentages should be read as approximate. Reviews of fewer than 15 characters were not sent to the model; they count as positive or negative from the reviewer's own recommendation and carry no topic.
Limits
People who write a Steam review in Japanese are not a representative sample of everyone who plays in Japan, and the language of a review does not establish where its author lives. Steam's default filter for off-topic review activity was left on, so periods Steam marked as review bombing are excluded from the counts in this article. Reviews that arrived after the retrieval date are not included.
Links
Data from Steam. Steam and the Steam logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Valve Corporation.